This blog round up is somewhat later than I had intended, but for good reason. I've been waiting for a couple of blog posts to emerge into the public domain, so that I could include them in the round up. I can't impress upon you how important it is to read these posts.
Errrmmm... Happy New Year! :D Sorry for not keeping up with my blog round-ups.
I've been looking at my HUGE back log of blog entries and thinking I should do a round-up and then being too daunted by the task. So finally last week I decided to go back to the 26th of January and only read those blog entries and round-up from there and then mark everything as read!
Now that have a sensible number of blog entries in Google Reader I'm finally starting to read them again, so here goes nothing!! ;)
I mentioned previously in my Scotch on the Rocks Reviews post that two of my colleagues did write-ups of their days and sessions at Scotch.
Well, here are those write-ups.
Both of these guys are Senior Developers in the company with very different backgrounds and projects.
James' has been involved in projects like KPM Music's PLAY Production Music site. Andy's been working on Enigma's SiteBuilder
product and the impending version 2 release. Their projects have had
very different problems to solve and different technologies to solve
those problems, giving them very different views of ColdFusion and CFML.
So anyway - enough waffle from me here are their write-ups. Enjoy.
James' summary:
Following my excursion to the Coldfusion conference in Edinburgh last Thursday, I have put together some notes that some of you may / may not be interested in.
The topics covered in this document are :
Modularizing your Flex Application with Cairngorm and Modules
Top level discussion on the best practices for the structure of medium to large Flex applications using design patterns such as MVC, Singletons and Observer. A basic understanding of Flash and Flex is required.
Document Driven Coldfusion 8
Dynamic data input and output using CF8 with PDF's. Using PDF's as an Offline data storage and form submission interface with CF8.
Getting to grips with Air and Aptana
AIR is the Adobe desktop application API. AIR applications are built using simple HTML, CSS, graphics and JavaScript. The AIR API also provides network access, client file system access, drag and drop style functionality and runs both on PC and Mac OS from the same executable file. Any JavaScript libraries including jQuery may be used to provide AJAX style web call functionality.
Coldfusion 8 Performance Monitoring & Alerts
Previously, CF7 servers could only be monitored using a third party monitor such as Coldfusion Reactor. CF8 now comes with a built in monitor and alerts system which can be launched through the CFIDE Server Monitoring tab
Also announced at the conference was the merge of JBoss and Railo and that Railo is to become open source. Everybody got very excited and clapped at this news but I didn't really understand! I am hoping Stephen is going to elaborate on this for me!
Andy's summary:
Event Driven Programming
A very nice paradigm for structuring applications The Modern Way - some excellent stuff here that we could all learn a lot from.Keeping your Apps and Servers Healthy
A nice introduction to a variety of useful monitoring tools, some nice tips, and a preview of fusionAnalytics, which will be a must-have when it comes out.Architecting Apps for Multiple UI Technologies
Harder to summarise, but some nice ideas for better designing one's application architecture to suit multiple UIs. Also some good general purpose programming guidelinesAdvanced Model Glue
Some features of the Model Glue framework that many people (apparently) don't know exists. As I didn't know anything about Model Glue at all, I found this one very enlightening, and made me want to try a lot of the stuff mentioned.Complementing CFML with Open Source Java.
The least useful of the lot, but still interesting. There's a lot of Java frameworks out there which can be used out-of-the-box with Coldfusion, and they're usually a lot more capable and fully featured than their CF equivalents (if such exist). They're also way more complex and a right pig to install.
I also wanted to mention a couple of people that didn't get the recognition that they deserved for their work and assistance at Scotch. In no particular order, a big thank you to Leanne, Andy's better half, and Jatin Nanda (manager of the forthcoming UK RIA User Group) for all the work that they put into making Scotch a success behind the scenes before and during the conference.
Amazing news heard first at Scotch on the Rocks!
Railo has joined the jboss community! What does this mean?
Railo will be going to two versions. Railo Community, which will be Open Source under the lGPL licence and Railo Enterprise, which will include the likes of their new CFVideo tag and CFDocument tag.
Becoming part of the JBoss community opens up CFML to a huge new community of application developers with the possibility of integration with the likes of Hibernate and JBoss Cache with takes like cfdata and cfcache
Whether these tags see the light of day will be down to the Railo Community.
Why JBoss? Its a big Java community that can help much more with development of the application server. There are so many possibilities and to be honest some of it is a bit above my head, but be sure I will be reading up on it and watching what happens!
There's not much there at the minute, but you will be able to find Railo Community here : http://www.jboss.org/railo/ and I'll leave any more commentary to people more knowledgeable than myself.
Scotch has begun! The turn out is superb and despite a few minor problems everything seems to be going great!
I've just done a quick head count and it looks like we have about 130 delegates here at the minute. There are a bunch of unclaimed passes and a bunch of people that will be here on other days, so I think we're probably looking at more as the day goes by and on the other days.
I'm currently sitting in Matt Woodward's session on General OO, enjoying a little bit of a sit down after running around with Kev, Jatin, Andy and his better half, Leanne, making sure everything was ok for speakers in the first sessions.
We've had a couple of hiccups, but I think a lot of the lessons we learnt from last year's Scotch on the Rocks are coming in to play and definitely feels to be running smoother than last year.
Well, best sign off, soon be time for the next session... Who to look in on?? Peter Bell - requirements and Estimating or Nicolas Lieman - Web Analytics for the developer? I'll probably just float.
Hope everyone is enjoying the conference so far! Tonight's BOF on Open Bluedragon should be interesting!! Hope to see you there and catch up with as many of you as possible.
Last chance to get your early bird prices for Scotch on the Rocks!! Last chance to get £100 off the price of your ticket!
Do it now! Tomorrow will be too late!
Find out about the speakers and topics that will be being discussed : http://www.scotch-on-the-rocks.co.uk/
There might even be some Open Bluedragon discussions that aren't on the agenda... Given that 4 of the committee members will be at the conference... ;)
Register and purchase your tickets here : http://www.scotch-on-the-rocks.co.uk/register/
Seven days left! Thats all there is before the early bird discount ends.
We're into April now, so your boss should be now have budgets opened
up for the new financial year. Make him really happy by persuading him
to buy your tickets to Scotch on the Rocks (probably the best
conference you'll attend in the UK this year) NOW! Right now!! Before
the end of the month, while the ticket prices are still at the early
bird price.
Here's what you'll be missing out on if you don't get your tickets now.
| Ticket Type | Before | After | Saving |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Day Conference Ticket | £99 + VAT | £149 + VAT | £50 + VAT |
| 2 Day Conference Ticket | £149 + VAT | £199 + VAT | £50 + VAT |
| 3 Day Conference Ticket | £199 + VAT | £299 + VAT | £100 + VAT |
| FlexiPass | £299 + VAT | £399 + VAT | £100 + VAT |
That's right! If you're coming to the full conference, paying
for your ticket now will save your boss (or you) £100! (£117.50 if you
can't claim the VAT back)
You know you want to! You really don't want to miss out on a 3 day conference with a speaker list like this at these incredible prices!
I'm absolutely sure I've missed some! And of course there's Jatin Nanda, Big Mad Kev, myself and, the man in the skirt, Andy Allan, who will be working working hard to make sure that this conference is everything you want it to be and more!
Visit the website to find out more about the speaker, the agenda, location and to BUY YOUR TICKETS while they are still cheap as chips! ;)
There's been a couple of updates on the Scotch website today.First of all there is a first draft of the schedule for the three days of the conference. Download the pdf that will show you all the speakers and their topics, the days that they will be speaking on.
This is only the first draft and if you think that there are topics that clash in the tracks, then please don't hesitate to let us know. After all, as we've always said, this is a conference for developers by developers.
Something that we haven't mentioned before, but I think has the potential to be really exciting. This year we have the facility and the speaker-base to be able to offer ad hoc sessions.
What does this mean for you as a delegate? We spend a lot of our time talking to the speakers and the delegates through out the conference. If we find that there is interest in a particular topic that we don't already have on the agenda, we will do our best to set up a session to cover this topic. How's that for a dynamic conference about dynamic technologies? ;)
If you're looking for accommodation for the conference, we can help with that too now. Kev, has got us set up an affiliate with HostelBookers.com
Use this search to help find a room. If you want to share a twin room with someone put a shout on the Scottish CFUG Google Group or give me a shout and I'll do it for you!
Last but not least... See an interview with Mr T. Dare you invoke the wrath of Mr T and not come to Scotch? Take advantage of the last day of early bird discount!
Just wanted to quickly remind everyone that the Scotch on the Rock early bird discount ends this Friday!! That's Friday 29th February.
After this the price for a standard ticket will rise from £199+VAT for the three days to £299+VAT. So still an excellent deal, but just not quite as good as 3 days of conference with a ton of superb speakers and topics for only £199.
If you don't already know, there will be some "CF9 Specials" at Scotch on the Rocks! We've got Ben Forta, Adam Lehman, Jason Delmore, Kristen Schofield plus some of the engineering team coming to Scotch and yes, they will be talking about CF9.
Better hurry up and get your tickets. ;)
Tickets for Scotch on the Rocks have gone on sale this morning!
If you buy your ticket before 1st March you can get get £100 off the price of the ticket!That's right! £100 saving!
There are two types of ticket available this year; Your standard delegate pass, which is available for £199 and a company flexipass for £299 for the three days.
So what's the difference? Why does the company Flexipass cost more?
The standard ticket is for one named delegate only, so only one person can use that pass to attend all three days of the conference.
The Flexipass can be used by one delegate per day. Its often difficult for any of us to justify being away from our desk for one day, let alone 3 days. What the Flexipass allows a company to do is send a different member of your development team each day.
So why should you attend Scotch on the Rock 2008?
Take a look at the agenda and the speaker list!! There are some amazing speakers and topics at the conference this year! International speakers such as Matt Woodward, Peter Bell, Ben Forta, Toby Tremayne (coming all the way from Australia). European speakers such as Peter Elst (from Belgium) and local speakers such as Mark Drew and Neil Middleton, plus many many more!
The topics at the conference cover anything from CF/Flex and ColdFusion and PDF, Railo, AIR APIs through to LiveCycle Data Services and Blaze!
Why wouldn't you attend this conference!?! Why are you reading my blog still and not buying your tickets and booking your hotel room! ;)
